Yesterday afternoon the Lawrence Clan made its way to the National Science Museum, here in KL. It promised to be a pleasant Sunday afternoon trip out after a pleasant Sunday morning in where we had all done our best to look like we were doing useful, and sometimes school related, things.
The Science Museum is a large, dome like structure and boasts scientific installations that mostly work and are quite thought provoking for kids and adults alike. There was also an Australian produced murder mystery exhibit too that required big and bigger kids to piece together scientific clues to see which person had killed a poor zoo keeper. (It wasn’t the rhino, for those who feel themselves drawn towards this particular red herring.) It was all quite enjoyable really. However my main question from my visit was why were there so many people trying to work there?
Things looked good as we paid RM21 for the entire clan (less than 4 GBP) to go in to one lady behind the main counter. She gave us two tickets, one for the adults and one for the kids, plus various guides and promotional materials. Splendid. Next we headed towards the fish tank tunnel entrance to get in to the museum, but before we could officially enter we had to show our two tickets to two more counter staff. One of them stamped our tickets, while the other watched her. Observing this process was a cleaner leaning against the counter and, just in case one person decided that they might need a fight, a security guard looked on. Our tickets were returned to us, stamped, without incident and without the exchange of blows.
Later in our tour we made for the Murder Mystery exhibition. Of course we had to show our tickets to go in, but disaster had struck. Somewhere along the way I had mislaid the children’s ticket. I approached the murder mystery entrance with caution. At the entrance sat two museum staff, while another stood. The stander took our ticket, singular, punched a hole in it, handed it back to us and waved us all through without requesting the children’s ticket. The other two staff carried on sitting, as did another security guard. Nine different staff so far.
I know that there is a fine balance to be struck between employing enough staff to get the job done, but not employing too few so that the staff that are present are exploited. However when there are nine people doing the jobs of two maximum only inefficiency wins.
Edwin is heading off to Manila for four days tomorrow and one of this evening’s challenges has been trying to change a small amount of ringgit spending money into pesos. The first bureau de change we visited was open, but had no staff in the booth. The second had two staff but no pesos. Following a sign to the third it appeared to have disappeared. Instead a security guard walked Edwin and I to a hotel check-in counter where a bloke offered to phone his boss. The boss duly arrived and asked how much we wanted: about ten quid’s worth. The boss thought for a while before scolding the security guard for, what it appeared, dragging him to come and see some idiot foreigner and his 10 quid request. The counter staff got away without out a scolding all of which was watched by a cleaner who appeared to have nothing better to do. We left without changing any cash and feeling a bit sorry for the guard who was only trying to find a job to do.